NOTE AB (publ)

This slide becomes more and more worded, so we need to start to deword it because we have so many things we want to talk about. But we are investing for the future and for continued profitability. As I said many times before, our profitability comes from our operational performance. It's not that we are increasing prices or pricing our customers in another way. We simply try to be more efficient than our peers. And that is why we are making a few percent higher than the industry standard. All that comes from investments. It comes from using more modern tools, using AI agents to be more smart in how we produce. We try to decrease the number of workers compared to our sales and so on. But all that comes with the price, and that is for us investment in both equipment and in building, so we can facilitate more production in the current, how shall I say, frame that we work from. And this work continues. And it's also good that during then, I mean, we have built up Torsby. We will move into the new premises, I think, in the end of November. And then we will start to move production in there in the first quarter next year. That has happened, but in the meantime, Torsby is still generating very good business. And that does not interfere with our ability to be operational efficient. So we are quite good in doing large projects. Now we are approaching two moves in the next year, while Lund is moving to new premises and also... Hyvinke will move to new premises. But we are confident that that will be a smooth transition because we do this quite often. And this is part of our DNA to be efficient and strong in these kind of activities. And for those that follow us, know that this is one of my most important topics, that our production is our engine, it's our heart, and we are proud to say that we're good at it. And that's what we see on the market, that the customers really appreciate that. On top of that, we invest for future growth, the acquisition of Caston. We have talked very little about it, but this is one of the, how should I say, one very strong company, especially in the defense sector. They are very good in production in the earlier phases. They are good in MPI. They are good in pre-series. They are good in small series. They are very strong in production with customers. big variations of products. And I think their ability to generate new customers and new leads will be a strength in our UK operations. But also we expect that with a new ownership structure, we can continue to grow this facility quite nicely in the coming years. The outlook for growth in this factory is really strong. It's stronger than what we see in the rest of the group. They are also deepening our position in the defense sector, which we are very proud of as well. So we welcome Kaston and the Kaston team to our group, and we think that will be a good asset for us going forward. We talked a little bit about our ability to deliver operational excellence, but the last couple of years with the component crisis and so on, we lost some on-time delivery. I can now say that we are back about 96% in on-time delivery performance. And 96% is, I often refer to it internally, that's when my phone stops to ring from annoyed customers. If we're below 90%, we have a lot of annoyed customers. So I think that is one key KPI that those of you that follow us and other peers should be really keen on looking at because the satisfied customers have a tendency to not leave us. And we have very strong retention. We don't lose customers. That is also something that we are very proud of. We come back to some guidance and so on, but these are my operational highlights from this quarter. We talk about basically the same topics every time, but that's because they are so important. What I didn't mention is that my other big interest in this is customers and how customers are doing. I think I have two, three customer meetings every week at least and are involved in how we deal with customers on a much more deeper level than that when it comes to internal decisions on how we quote, how we price, how we work with efficiencies and so on. I think that is also one of our assets, that this goes all the way through our management team, that customer orientation is so important for us, and that should be something that are reflected throughout how we work. So that's very, very important for me. Going into some numbers, these we have presented. I think what I would like to highlight of this is, of course, the strong profitability. 9.6% underlying and we have our best quarter that is yet to come. Q4 is by trend always the strongest quarter. We are guiding for 10 to 11%. We need to reach 10.9% to reach 10% for the year. And we still have an internal objective to reach 10% underlying OPE for the year. I think custom will positively affect our profitability, both in terms of real numbers, but also in terms of percentage. So that will be a good asset for us. As I said before, profit after tax is really important for us. That generates our cash flow, that generates our ability to act on the market. And what is also very interesting is that even after the acquisition of Kastan, we still have room for more acquisitions. I've been questioned that we had a big dividend. Did we give out our ability to grow and acquire? I think the answer to that is no. We have proven that we can do it and we are determined to continue with this journey. And then we have not even tried the route to issue shares for this. So that's how we deal with this. Cash flow, very important. I talked about it before. I think we have 100 to 150 million that is left to take out on top of our operational cash flow coming from reduced inventories. And also the effect of when we start to buy according to our sales, we will increase our APs and that will also have a positive effect on our cash flow. So we see very positively upon this going forward. Our reporting segments, I talked about it before, rest of the world, that means Bulgaria, China and Estonia. 8.3% is, I think, is our record. We have been at 8 before, but 8.3 is the record. And we have very good operations there. We did... A cutback in China about a year ago. We have been very cautious with adding people in Estonia. Bulgaria is gearing up. I think Bulgaria has, what is it, 30 plus percent growth, even more, even from a low level. But that has a good impact of the results. So this is three very well-run sites, and I'm very pleased with the management of those sites. Then we shouldn't forget that Western Europe, 9.9% is not our record. It's still a good number. We know we can do better. We have some sites, especially in the UK, that is not performing according to expectation. That is something that we are working on and that we believe we will sort out in the coming quarters. So we have good expectations. On top of that, we talk about what is the realistic profitability going forward. I would say that if we continue to quote and price products the same way we do, I would expect profitability to increase in percentage. We're now targeting slightly bigger customers. That might mean that we will remain around the 10%. We will see which customer in the contract that we win, and that will have an effect. But if we continue with the current operations, we will end up in higher profitability when the growth is coming back. But we will come back to you with more details either in the Q4 report or in Capital Markets Day if we choose to have that in December. But all in all, I think it's really good numbers that we show in both areas. And I'm pleased to see that the rest of the world is doing better than last year. If we do 5% in that part, that part represents, I'm trying to add up in my head, but say 25-30% of our top line. And if that doesn't perform according to the group, that is a burden to the group. But now we are seeing that this is a good level. I also think that we should be, when we look at the rest of the world, if we can keep them at 8 plus percent, I think that is a level that will, together with the Western European profitability, that will add up to the 10 percent or higher. I don't have the same profitability expectations of these factories. There are naturally lower margin customers that are in these factories, and that is something that we are dealing with, and that is something that we are planning for. So I'm happy with the performance there. I'm happy with the performance in the Swedish sites. The Finnish sites, we struggle in the UK, and that is reducing our OP in Western Europe. We come back to that a little bit. You can see that we have 34% negative growth in the UK, and that is our biggest challenge at the moment for the group. Segments, our big industrial segment, that's our engine, as I always call it. We're seeing 10% negative for the year, but it showed 1% plus in the third quarter. I still believe that we are not in the good growth in this segment. It's a lot of customers. It's a big mix of customers here. Some of them are coming back to good double-digit growth. Some are still struggling to get back on track. Security and defense will show growth of 8% for the year. This is what I call a bit disappointing. We're decreasing in this segment for the quarter. I've talked about it in the previous calls that defense is an area that... Year over year, we will see a constant growth. I think that we will see at least 30% CAGR in this segment if we look at the three to five year period. We had 90% last year. We will have a slower growth this year. Next year, we believe that we will be back on numbers that are in that range. And this comes basically from that. Ramping up electronic manufacturing is significantly easier than to ramp up like, I often refer to if you build like an archer, I mean the guy that is doing the launching equipment and that for them to ramp up is much more tricky than to ramp up electronics. So we are a bit in the hands of our customers ability to ramp up and scale up their own production. So that means that we might be a bit ahead of some of the deliveries into some of the systems that our customers is delivering. And that's something that we know and that has been the case for many years. So we are not concerned of the negative growth in the quarter. We just see that that is some of the programs we delivered more than our partners in the supply chain could do in that field. So this is something that will come back throughout this year and next year. Also with custom, I think that if we are running this, I think 13% of sales is now in the security and defence area. If we would add custom to this, it would add 2-3% each unit in this segment. So that will take us slightly higher than 15-16% in this segment. And we expect the organic growth coming from this segment to increase that share significantly over the coming years. Communication, I think it's still a segment that we are not very pleased with. There's a lot of delays in this segment. In Q3 last year, we were a bit complaining about the order intake and the pushouts from the customers there. We see a few of our largest customers are not back to numbers that we are expecting and that they are expecting. And that will affect our ability to grow. One positive thing is that we have signed this agreement with Waystream that we communicated in the second quarter that we will be their only supplier and they are sourcing back the manufacturing from China to our Lund facility. And that is something that will start to come into our books in the fourth quarter and the first quarter next year. They still are consuming inventory that were produced in their Chinese supplier side. Medtech is an area where we have a few customers, and if one or two of them are late with deliveries, that will have an effect in our quarter. I think if you look at this, the Medtech sales is adding up from maybe six larger accounts, and in this quarter we had no deliveries to one of them due to overstock or that they choose to produce other products. And that is affecting the quarter. Green tech, I often laugh when I look at this. This was 28% of our sales three years ago. Now it's coming back. We had the best quarter in maybe two years in the segment. We were up 47%. And the pleasing here is to see that it's not, I mean, Plaid has been in this segment and they have been growing, but this quarter the growth is coming more from what I call a return on the EV market. We see Sharchamp is moving up. We have some other customers that are really ramping up in this segment. So we are pleased to see that this quarter is widening and growing. So that is very, very good. I think I said that after Q1 or so that this segment is getting so small so we cannot shrink it anymore, but now we see that it's coming back in a good way. And the outlook for this segment is the continued growth. If we are coming in at 47% in Q4, I don't expect that, but I expect it to be in good double-digit growth also in the fourth quarter. So for the year, it will be a good recovery in this segment. You can argue if this is a strategy that is good to be in this segment because the electrification is a bit slow at the moment. And if you look at Germany, if you look at other markets, they're pushing back on the demands on what to do here. But if you look at Sweden, I mean, the chargeable cars are still selling between 60 and 70 percent month after month. So there will be more and more EV cars out on the streets. This is primarily driven by by by company cars, of course. But what the good thing is that three years after the company cars is what that will be sold to a private person because that's when the lease period ends. So there will be secondary sales of cars is adding a lot of volume to the EV market. And those customers that are buying used EV cars, they will buy their charging station. So we still believe that there's a lot of room for growth in this area. And that is also our customers' view of this. And if you look further out in Europe, I mean, the percentage of EV cars is shrinking the further down you get. If you get to South Europe, you rarely see EV cars, which is a bit frustrating if you produce EV chargers. But that's how it is. So we will see where this takes us. But my expectations is that we have stabilized on a low level. We're starting to grow and we expect this segment to continue to grow over the coming quarters. um so that is basically how we see the segments um if you look at our our graphs we we have really turned the trend on profitability i've been clear on that that we are that this is the area where we are seeing our ability to deliver is is is stronger than on the top line Profitability is more in our hands. The sales is, you can, how should I say it, a bit more, you can say that it's the customers that has to come in. Then you can argue, okay, we need to win more customers. And that is true. And that is something that we do constantly. But I said it before that... the time it takes from from you win the customer until that product is ramped up is increasing and that is a trend we have seen ever since the component crisis that that our customers are are still they have we have pre-produced we have made made the industrialization projects but they still are selling their old versions for a longer time the exchange of going from the old to the new versions is a bit slower And that is pushing out some of our growth in the coming year. And that is something that we are working with the customers both to understand and also to see how we can help them to be more efficient in the ramp-up. But this time has been longer if I look at the last two years compared to the period before. And that prevents us a bit from our growth. So what we say is that we anticipate that our sales will come into a million to a million or a billion to one billion fifty and that we will have a margin 10 to 11 percent. So that is where we expect to end the quarter. And of course, with strong underlying cash loads to continue to generate into that pocket. So with that said, I think I will stop my presentation. My view is that the third quarter is a very good quarter. I would have liked to see more top line. I think that all other indicators are in where we want it to be. Profitability is continuing to increase and to increase with one percentage unit with only 6% growth. I think that's very good. I often say that If you are below 5%, then it's a cost-cutting activity. It's not a volume game. So to be able to improve that number with this much is really pleasing. I think that if we look at the year as such, I think, what is it, 0.7% up on an organic growth of zero. I think that's also good. So we need to get our growth back in shape. The rest of the business is looking as we want it. So that is my conclusion of this. So I will open the floor for questions. Do we do questions in the room before?

Thank you. It's on? Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Johannes. Anders Åkeblom from Nordea. Just a few questions from my end. So firstly, I mean, you alluded to it a bit with larger customer contracts, but it would be interesting to hear how you kind of view the potential trade-off between volume growth and profitability.

I think that if you look at our business and if you read... This will be a long answer. I will start with saying that, Anders, because I think it's a very important and good question. If you look at our business and say that with a normal customer contract, if you win, say, 100 million contracts, we will normally expect to see 15% or higher fall through on that contract. That is what we... You utilise your fixed cost assets in a more wider way and then the fall through is quite strong. If you look at larger accounts, maybe we expect the fourth to be in the range between, say, 9% to 12%. And that would mean that even if it's a quite lower margin compared to some other customers, that will still add profitability in the same range, even if we are pricing it quite aggressive. So that's how we see it. But this is something that we look very carefully in Andersson. I think it's a very valid point. And we will have factories where we will focus on this, where we'll have a lower margin expectation. And we'll have factories where we are not going into that chase for these customers, where we will have another kind of margin expectation. But the overall picture is that we are expecting to remain at this level. 9.5% to 10.5% is what I would expect for the future. Personally, I expect us to be over 10%, but this is where we are heading, and this is what we are planning for. But growth is very important for us at the moment. You can say that the last, say, one and a half year, there has been a lot of focus also on getting the inventories down. That has been also pushed out, and that can have had some effect on our ability to grow, because we think it's very important to have the inventory in shape. So it's a lot of deviating targets that has to be managed into one group of results. So that's how I see it.

It's for the audience. Sorry, I thought my voice was sufficient. So looking at industrial, I mean, as you said, flat-ish, basically year-over-year growth, up 1%. So we've started to see a bit of an early cyclical recovery, I mean, partly for other contract manufacturers, but in the market in general. You mentioned that it was weakness among one customer in Sweden and weakness in the UK, if I heard correctly, driving that. But looking at the portfolio in general, how would you characterize the trend among your customers? Is it sluggish also apart from those customers?

I would say that there is quite a big... How should I say it? I would say the larger, more well-known industrial companies, we see quite decent growth, 5% to 10%, maybe 15% on those. Where we are struggling is more customers that are more new starter companies. I wouldn't call them startups because they are past the scale-up, but not with a wide range of products compared to like... ABB or Atlas Copco. I think those companies, just to mention two, they receive better growth. So I think the recovery for the larger companies is a bit earlier than for the smaller ones. Very, very general. UK we have talked about and the decrease we have seen for this year is particularly our largest customer that has clearly informed us that that they have three quarters of overstock and they will not buy and we started that one up again now in in september not at full speed but still very important for us okay makes sense uh just the final one from my end so you discuss

sort of delays in the defense what should i say ecosystem or value chain in the quarter um does that in any way incrementally change your view of of touche perhaps the ramp up and when you expect to reach sort of satisfactory capacity utilization in that factory

I would say that in Torsby we are turning somewhere around 950 million. We doubled the floor space so we have another billion until we are satisfied with growth there and that will take us some years to come there for sure.

Will you face the ramp up in any way differently I guess is my question.

Very good question. But I would say like this. We will make the move as planned, move the processes so they are at the right positions. We will not invest in new lines if we don't need it. That will come upon need, so to say. But we will have what I call gaps in our layout where we want to place the new machines when we need them. So we have a plan that we work on, but we don't push the button on machine investments until we need it. I mean, the building is, what should I say, 90% down, so we will not delay that. That's not part of our view, but... Yeah, that will, of course, follow the needs, so to say. And in Torsby, it's quite good. I mean, a big part of that is defense. Defense is very good at having good visibility on what they want to do. Then I think that we and all our peers are seeing the same, that electronics is quite easy to ramp up. It's the bigger hardware that takes some more time. So we and others are going to see some pushouts on projects that are not coming on time. But over time, the capacity increase among our customers will come. So it's, yeah, I can talk a lot about this. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation, Johannes. Just on the defense and in terms of backlog, could you give some color on sort of how much of the defense, I don't want to call it downturn, but negative growth in Q3 is sort of delayed deliveries and how much is actual project deferrals into 2026 and in terms of the flattish backlog development this quarter?

Yeah, I think we don't report the backlog on segments, so we still see that defense is growing. I think the other part of the backlog is the better availability on components, the shorter term you see orders on. So I think that is still an effect of this. But very hard to say. We had in Q3 and Q4 last year, I think we had over 120% growth year over year in defense. So we had two really strong quarters. So I think we're meeting some really challenging peers in that way. But our trend line is very, very, very strong. And I think if you look at next year, I think we will be back to the 25-30% growth in defense in Torsby. That's what all indications are telling us. But it was a bit, we knew that Q3 would be a bit weaker. We have delivered one of the bigger projects that we ended deliveries in May. And then that... is having a stop for some month until until our customer has consumed up the board so to say i understand so there weren't any sort of planned deliveries in q3 that are now pushed out too but the majority is that we we we one of the bigger programs we we did not deliver in q3

Thank you. And a slightly more technical question here. You talked about these new potential customer wins and sort of the activity in this area. I was just wondering if you win a new product line, or this is in general as well, do you manufacture 100% of that product line? Or does the customer also manufacture some of this same product line, if that makes sense?

Yeah, I think I have got that question from many times. And I think I can say that we have maybe two customers that are of importance that could potentially produce the products that we make. And one of them is, of course, Plaid that is using own production. And I think you could argue that maybe like ABB and Schneider could potentially do it. They have SMD equipment in place. The business units that we talk or work with among these customers do not have SMD capacity. So I would say that the only customer where we see this that I think is a bit more If we could call it threat, it's of course played. We have a very good relation with them and this year has been a fantastic year for us. Otherwise, I don't see this as a problem. I don't think played is a problem either. It's just that we need to work together to do the best out of it from both ends. Very clear. Thank you. Other customers in the room, otherwise I move over to the web. I'll start from the first one and that is Thomas. Thank you for the effort you and the great team of note is doing. I think Thomas is the guy I like. The inventory is slightly up compared to Q1. How do you view current inventory levels and when do you expect growth here? I would say that I don't want to say too much, but I think you are wrong, because this question came in five minutes before I started, so I checked this with our CFO, and we're actually down 60 million from Q1, ending Q1 until the end of Q3. But there is still more to do on the inventory levels. Even if we start to grow, I still expect the inventory to continue to decline over the coming quarters. Because we look at inventory aging, and we can see that we have inventory of maybe 200 million that is older than we want it to be. And that means that that will bleed out through this period, and we will not replace it until this has come out. So even if we start to buy on new programs, we will offset that with reducing the inventory that is aging. So that is how I see this. Then I go to Johnny. Regarding your Q4 guidance, how much contribution do you expect from Caston acquisition in Q4? If we adjust for M&A contribution FX, how much have you adjusted your organic growth expectations? Caston did £12 million last year in top line, and we have taken one-fourth of that into our guidance. Of course, they are very profitable companies, so we are expecting that to help our ability to come in with strong numbers on the OP level. I cannot be more specific. Acquisition is still yet to be approved, so that's how we see it. Okay, then we have one more from Johnny. Can you talk a bit about the Kastner acquisition? Margins looks very high. What makes you confident that these levels are sustainable for the future? I think that is a very good question, Johnny. And what I see here is that over the last four years, which is when the company structure changed in Kastner Electronics, they have been looking at margins that are similar to where they are. We know that they are growing and we know that they are in, I would not call it segment, but in production of specific products. I was touching upon it at the start. It's very complicated products, very small volumes. We have for a few customers, maybe one to five pieces per batch. And if you have that, you have a lot of services included in what you produce. So there is very little material and a lot of, of manual work, a lot of technical support. So we believe that this is a sustainable level, otherwise we would not have acquired them. We will come back to you more on that when we have them in our books. Okay, then we have one more from Jonny. Green tech sales look strong. What is driving that? I think that I have answered that, so I will not go into that, Jonny. You can give me a call later if you're not happy with that answer. Then we have one from Per. The Swedish crown has become even stronger in the last quarter. Looking into 2026, how will this affect the business? And how would an even weaker dollar affect note? we have quite transparent pricing to our customers, which means that we will have similar margins independently of the currency fluctuations. And that is what I think is a strength for us. I said it before that when the Swedish krona is... Gaining strength, we will have an exchange rate gain that will be reported, and we report that as what you call it, we take it away for the underlying measurements. So even when it gets weaker, we have that, and when it gets stronger. This year, I think we have gained 10 million or so on this line. If I take it from back of my head, I don't have the number, but... Otherwise, that will not affect it. Of course, it will affect top line. I mean, we report in Swedish, if the sales in dollar is reducing, that will have a limiting effect of our top line. So that is basically how I see it. Okay. Then we have one from David. Will the Kastner acquisition be fully consolidated as of Q4, and is the unit consequently included in the revised Q4 guidance? Yes. We are expecting that we will close this acquisition in the mid of October, and as long as that happens, they will be consolidated from October 1st. I'm looking at Frida, and she's nodding, so that is what we will do. Then we have from Andreas. I noted Hansa's acquisition of BMK in Germany yesterday. What are your thoughts on this? Really good question because, I mean, Hansa is becoming big, so that is good for them. When you look at Germany, and Germany has been one of our target markets for many years to acquire in, And I took part of a report of the German industry outlooks and I was not very, very pleased with that. We were in quite close discussions with one target and we decided to withdraw from that target at that time. And the reason is that Germany is so heavily driven by automotive. I think 40% of EMS production in Germany historically has been towards automotive. When that segment is shrinking and the outlooks are really poor, the EMS companies, in my opinion, will start to chase other customers. And that means that I think there will be a lot of pressure on the companies within Germany to deliver this. Germany has a quite high cost level, so I see the spreading effects outside of Germany is not that big. So we are quite cautious about Germany, even though it's the biggest market in Europe and we would love to be there. But at this moment, we have put that on hold. So good question, and I think the market is moving, and we have to move with it. So we are a bit hesitant to Germany at the moment. Then Johan, you're lowering your full year guidance compared to Q2. Is this because of currencies or slower customer demand than expected? Yes. I mean, currency, we will have 100 to 120 million is our expectation of lower turnover for the year due to the stronger Swedish currency. And then we see some customer push-outs in the fourth quarter that is adding to that. But the majority is that we come in slightly lower on the currency and that we see some push-outs on the customer side. But yes, currency is a big effect of us missing the guidance. Thank you. Just a follow-up for Q4 guidance. What is your underlying change in organic growth expectation would you estimate? I need to think about what he means. Okay, what are our organic growth expectations compared to last quarter? That is how I read it. Yeah, I expect us to have positive organic growth, but in very low numbers. That is my expectation. I said at this call when we were talking a quarter ago that we expected 5% to 10% for the second half. I think we will not reach that level in the fourth quarter. We will be 0% to 5% is our estimation. Yes, Johan Hultner, is there a possibility that you at Node can learn from Kasten and push morning levels higher in the core Node operations? Yes, Johan, we will always try to use best practice where we can. So this is something that we see very positively upon. I think that also Kasten will learn from our bigger sites to run more effectively. streamlined operations when it comes to larger batches. So I think there will be good learning from both ends. So we see very positively upon this. Then we have one from Christian. Does your guidance for Q4 mean that you expect organic flat or even negative growth or top line adjusted forecast? I think I answered that just now. And that is the last question I have from here. Is there any other questions from the audience? If not, I would like to summarize this. First of all, I think the questions are really good. I mean, we try to give reports and tell you what we think, and then you have a lot of questions, so that means that we can be even better on that. But it also shows what you as analysts or investors are thinking about, so I really appreciate those. When we look at the future, I think we still see good recovery plans from our customers. What we also see is that they forecast it and then they continue to push them out a little bit. But I think the level of... how should I say, positive views of the future is increasing every quarter. So I think that part is still valid. Q3, yes, better, or we came in on organic growth. I think we will have organic growth in Q4, slightly lower. I think the acquisition of Caston will be an injection of how we operate. I think it's very important for the UK operations as such to get Caston in. We're an optimistic company. We get a good customer portfolio that we can build on the next step. We know that Caston is... not doing much box build and that is a part that we can probably build on for some of the custom customers. We know that they are not doing larger series for some customers. We can add that capability to that. So we have good expectations that this will add new possibilities for us as a group. On top of that, we continue with our investments for the future i think we are positioning ourselves for growth going forward and that is what we are what we are expecting so we still believe that this is a very very interesting coming year and an interesting quarter to come and we are pleased to have you as shareholders that the ones that are so thank you for me and have a good day